Images of women’s breasts, presented in a sexualised context within mainstream newspapers and advertisements have, for decades presented women primarily as objects of masculine desire. The No More Page Three organization, whose campaign began in 2012 and is aimed at the biggest selling newspaper in the UK – The Sun’s – ‘Page 3’ feature, want to see an end to the outdated and irresponsible representation of women as passive sex objects.

Criticism of the No More Page Three campaign typically focuses on freedom of choice for consumers, and the freedom for women to display their bodies as they wish. But, that argument exists against a cultural backdrop in which women have reported in news articles and on social media sites that they have either been discouraged, prohibited or simply felt too uncomfortable breastfeeding in public because of the way it is perceived. As a response to this, the 2010 Equality Act specifically clarifies women’s lawful rights with regards to where and how they are entitled to breastfeed in public places. Freedom of bodily comportment then, isn’t always reasonably extended to women, unless it is within a sexual context.

No More Page Three’s Hidden Women Trail, which was presented in shop windows across the city throughout Hazard also subverted the shop window as a space for consumer display, by offering shoppers an educational treasure-hunt of great Manchester women. Maps were provided with clues to find particular shops in the city centre. Each shop window on the trail featured a picture and information about an inspirational woman, including Louisa Da-Cocodia, a Levenshulme resident, former deputy Lord Lieutenant of Manchester and community campaigner and activist in Moss Side, and Annie Swynnerton from Hulme who co-founded the Manchester Society of Women Painters in 1876, amongst others.

The hand-out provided for the trail included a section on the back for people to write their responses to the trail and to put forward their own examples of inspirational women, thus serving as a way to reflect on the achievements of women and to generate awareness of the various ways that different women have shaped modern life in Manchester and beyond.

Image credits: Hazard / No More Page Three

Follow us on Twitter @UKinteractions (you can join by scrolling to the bottom of this page).

Nicola Canavan’s use of a shop window in St. Ann’s Square during Hazard offered a place in which to frame her activity, but also situated her intervention within the characteristic space of consumer display and façade. Her performance played with the tension between display and function, ornament and use, which is connected with public opinion on the visibility of female breasts in public places.

Canavan sat within the window expressing milk, her body motionless, dressed in red and her face adorned with flowers. In the opposite window a skull was positioned on a low table, along with a taxidermy butterfly in a frame and a decanter with two glasses. The image was reminiscent of a still life painting – a style typically associated with domestic scenes and the absence of people.

Used to seeing plastic, unrealistically proportioned, headless bodies dressed in shop windows, people who had stopped to watch the performance questioned whether Canavan was real or a mannequin. The female body presented here spoke the language of the shop window, but this image was not selling a particular outfit, but rather presenting an image of womanhood. The mechanical action of producing milk – the regular, repeated movement of Canavan’s nipple, sucked by machine – offered a distanced, consumerist notion of the nursing mother and absent child.

With her head covered with flowers, her body covered in a long dress, wearing shoes, and with the pump almost completely covering her breast, the only exposed part of Canavan’s body was her nipple. One woman remarked that it was a ‘good job her face [was] covered’, in a way that suggested this act was something to be embarrassed by, or ashamed of.

The second half of the piece saw a reversal of the space, as Kris Canavan entered with their son, and Nicola Canavan removed her headdress. Nicola and Kris clinked their glasses together and drank a sherry glass each of breast milk, in an act of honouring the production of milk, and then Nicola Canavan sat back in her chair and continued to breastfeed their son for the remainder of the performance. The previous mechanical image of producing breast milk was replaced with the organic machinery of child latched onto nipple.

Without the headdress and with the presence of a child, reception of the piece changed considerably. It felt as though this image, of a mother feeding her son, was one that commanded respect. Many people stood and watched the piece at different times, some waiting for ‘something to happen’, but many in silent contemplation, in what appeared to me as a kind of vigil. Some people questioned the action of putting breastfeeding on display, but the piece certainly seemed to draw upon concerns around what kind of popular representations of womanhood and motherhood are deemed appropriate for public space.

Image credits: Hazard / Nicola Canavan

Follow us on Twitter @UKinteractions (you can join by scrolling to the bottom of this page).

Many people are aware of the popularity of the flashmob, which emerged in recent years as a fun collective take-over of public space, usually involving a choreographed routine in which a group of people suddenly break-out of the routine order of public space and perform their dance or movement, surprising and delighting ordinary occupiers of the space. This cultural form has since been co-opted by big business, as a fun form of guerilla marketing. Stephen Donnelly’s Drift Mob borrows from this phenomenon and nods to the Situationist practice of the dérive, which discouraged a rational, consumerist navigation of the city in favour of wandering and drifting, much like Baudelaire’s ‘Flâneur’.

Throughout the day at Hazard, Donnelly led groups of people to create his drift mobs. The group was put into an order so that each person involved was given the opportunity to lead the rest of the group. The rules were that the group could choose to either follow the leader or simply watch and support the rest of the group in performing an action. When a leader wanted to pass on the reins to someone else, they would squeeze the next person’s shoulder as a signal that they should take over.

The performance introduced a level of one-upmanship, as we tried to think of ways to take the group through ever more creative actions, or to tire people out. But, there was always the option not to partake. In reality, the group offered a certain freedom and security, spurring everyone to perform actions they would never think of performing at another time. It felt very rebellious, playful and exciting. For me, the most wonderful moments were when we came up with actions that related closely to the site – playing air guitar along to the musician next to the war memorial, making a temporary hand-print painting with fountain water, and climbing underneath and over stone benches.

The people-watchers sat at Starbucks, or on benches in St. Ann’s Square treated us as a comedic spectacle, whilst the managers of Office and Barclay’s Bank, whose shops we briefly occupied, treated us as unwanteds. The drift mob is a wonderfully ridiculous and unpredictable organism, which has the potential to make beautiful connections within the site, to expand the narrow range of movement and action expected in public spaces, and to disrupt commercial space with a drift of play.

I thought I might be able to glean some of the verbal responses from audience members to the work in the Hazard festival by making audio recordings. But this proved challenging: it being a busy, noisy city centre on a hot and sunny Saturday. Also I realised that people don’t say much out loud about what they’re feeling/thinking, unless they’re in a couple or group… and then it’s hard (and inappropriate?) to creep up on them and record what they’re saying.

I was struck by how the sounds of the city, street performers, street vendors merged and mixed with the sounds of the performances and the audiences responses. So here’s a sound collage of various audio aspects of the festival.

We’re gearing up for Hazard. We’ve checked the weather, got the gps tracker, sound-recorder, camera and crucially pen and paper. We (Dani, Gisele and Sarah) will be reflecting back here on this blog, on what we see, hear and take part in and especially listening out for how people in Manchester respond to the work.

It’s from 12 til 5pm this Saturday, 12.7.14. It’s the fifth outing for this micro-festival taking place in Manchester City Centre.